LaTeX is certainly not the easiest way to develop an academic poster, and an argument can be made that it's not actually the best way. However, poster printers and graphic design departments typically expect posters in PDF for traditional paper or fabric printing.
If you're committed to the LaTeX route, you need a starting point, and this repo may be helpful. (This class is similar to, but not exactly like, the baposter class, and your aesthetic preferences may be more in line with baposter. It's a great package with a long history.)
See the simple demonstration of empposter in the demo directory.
The inspiration for the layout of boxes in empposter is largely inspired
by HTML. Each posterbox is comprised of multiple nexted LaTeX boxes:
- A margin box, which defines empty space around the next box,
- A border box, which sets a color and width for the border around the next box,
- A padding box, which sets additional empty space inside the border and around the content
- A content box, which contains the desired text, images, etc.
The image below shows the hierarchy of these boxes. A difference from HTML is that, for empposter, the width parameter given as a keyword specifies the full width of the box, including its margins and border. This makes element positioning for print media easier.
